About to start the evaporator...

[Jec]

I'm about to start my evaporator with sap and do I add water then flush it out with sap? Or should I just put sap in? Help is appreciated.
Joey

[delta757and767pilot]

Well the sap is basically water with our sugar content so...lol

[RileySugarbush]

Just fill it up with sap and go!

[spencer11]

jec- how much sap are you getting/have? i still havent decied to tap up here.

spencer

[Ausable]

I'm about to start my evaporator with sap and do I add water then flush it out with sap? Or should I just put sap in? Help is appreciated.
Joey

Hey Joey! I'm guessing you have a continuous flow evaporator (pans are divided) and this is your first boil on it - did I guess right. If Ya never did a boil on it yet - I would do a test boil with water - just to get familiar with your rig and to see how everything works. When done and you are all excited with all the steam ya made - let it cool down - drain off - sponge out and dry your pans. Now You have an idea how it works and ya have some idea what might give you trouble in a real boil. Sooooooo - time to start boiling sap...... Now if you are drowning in too much sap and don't care about wasting some - use sap instead of water. What ever You do - the very best of luck...........

[Jec]

Well I have done test boils, but I wanted to clean the pans before. So I just boiled water then drew it off from the flue pan drain and draw off valve as I added sap. Seemed to work well because I now have a noticable gradient. Thanks for the replies,
Joey

[sweet willy]

If you test fire with water you don't want to use any water kind of hard water. You might end up with baked on mineral deposits. Not easy to clean off, I would recommend, distilled water or run the SAP.

[wiam]

I would put sap in it a not look back. I have never done a "test boil"

[Brent]

You can see some start up instructions on the Leader web site. They suggest washing, then rinsing with a baking soda solution.
You can download a full set from the Leader site